boey

Financially, it may not always make sense for a business to clear its debt using current funds. Debt does not mean a company is poor. One such example is if the loan was taken out with favourable interest rates, and the company believes that it can earn more money by investing its money rather than using it to clear off debt. It is possible for a club in-game to clear debt due to high balance, but it's completely up to the board.

Already exists. Trap Outside is to have a narrow defensive width. Trap Inside is for wide defensive width. No instruction for normal width.

This could be expanded upon. If you live in Croatia but work in London, you'd have increased travel times, therefore increased fatigue and decreased coaching effectiveness, team talks, match shouts etc.

You can see how well a player finishes in training, where there is little pressure to perform. Shooting drills can easily isolate a player's ability down to a few skills, like Finishing, Technique. In a match, a player's goal scoring ability does not only rely on such skills, as composure, anticipation, off-the-ball etc. are needed to perform under pressure and get into the necessary attacking positions. That's the idea behind the attribute system. You can download attribute-less skins, and play in that manner. It's a completely valid way to play, although the stats could be more in-depth. I kind of agree that the numbers don't really mean much, but it's a video game. You can't expect the majority of your player base to launch the game and work as professional data analysts and scouts to sign some virtual footballers.

I have two major gripes with upgrading facilities at the moment. This includes Youth Coaching and Youth Recruitment. 1. Upgrading facilities is too easy, and can be requested too often. I am currently managing West Brom, and I am halfway through the 2024/25 season. I have managed to get their facilities to the maximum bar youth facilities, which is currently at 18/20. This level of growth is unrealistic, as it would take tens of millions of dollars to develop state-of-the-art training facilities (see Liverpool's AXA training facility), and only teams that have had consistent success for years or decades are able to make such investments. 2. No option to build entirely new facilities, as is possible with stadiums It's incredibly unrealistic for a club in real life to make adjustments every few months to improve their mediocre facilities to become state-of-the-art. There should be a limit to how many times you can "upgrade" a facility, before the only option would be to build an entirely new one. Furthermore, upgrading facilities should not be possible so often, such as within weeks of the previous upgrade completion. It should not be possible for a club in the fourth division of England to develop state-of-the-art facilities in a few years. Players should be training in a training facility, not a construction site.

Yeah, I figured that since Leipzig is the only top flight major team using it, the game might not implement it yet. Realistically, once Pep starts using it, it'll be implemented into FM.

Title says all, most of my player retirements have occurred before a contract expires. If that happened IRL, many teams would be incredibly upset. Imagine making a calculated decision on transfer fee, contract length, wage etc., just for the player to decide halfway through the contract to stop playing? It's frustrating and does not make sense, unless the player is deeply unhappy with their playing time and is approaching the end of their career. Furthermore, if a player was not playing enough, would they not mind spending 1-2 more years collecting a paycheck, rather than retiring and voiding it? I've also seen a fair few screenshots of players retiring days, weeks, months, or even minutes after signing for a team.

Many teams now use their goalkeeper as a centre-back in buildup, notably Leicester, Leipzig, and a whole lot of other smaller teams all over the world. Currently, the closest role is the SK-At, but the behaviour of this role does not have the goalkeeper push up near his backline. A new role for this would be interesting.

Posted this before, and they said the main issue was licensing/legal-related. I figure it may have something to do with the 'additional comments' feature in interviews, as well as general interaction with media/players? I feel like that could be stripped down to accommodate for this feature, since interviews and media interaction is usually unimportant to most players' saves anyway.

First of all, there's no option to add an individual training for a player to train his tackling, which does not make much sense. Players can train their tackling ability IRL. Second of all, I think there should be an option to train more specific attributes, rather than to group several attributes together. For e.g. Strength and Jumping Reach, Finishing & Long Shots, Heading & Bravery

I agree

They're in the game already (somewhat). Players with high PAs and a lot of room to grow can start growing at much later ages now, although less common. I've had wonderkids stagnate from 18-22 then start growing rapidly at 23/24.

I've noticed that AI managers do not often change formations/playstyles unless their preferred one isn't working well. However, certain managers IRL do change their formation and playstyle based on the opponent. One example is Thomas Frank of Brentford. He often plays with a 4-3-3 in games where they try to dominate, against teams that will sit back against them. He then almost always switches to a 5-3-2 to sit back against bigger teams. This preference is actually reflected in-game, as 4-3-3 is his preferred attacking formation, and 5-3-2 is his preferred defensive formation. However, they tend to play 4-3-3 no matter the opponent, and the tactic is not adjusted much. Other examples are Carlo Ancelotti, Thomas Tuchel, and Jose Mourinho. A new trait for "Alters tactic for opponent" or something similar could help solve the problem. A manager's Tactical Knowledge attribute and Flexibility hidden attribute could determine how much/how well they change their tactic for the opponent. This trait would be assigned to coaches which are more pragmatic and play according to their opponent's playstyle, like the examples I've given

It's not realistic for the manager to have control over facility upgrades, assigning scouts, affiliate clubs, expanding/ building stadiums etc. However, they're in the game. If I can already request for facility upgrades, why can't I request for completely new facilities? Seems like a minor feature addition which doesn't take away from any realism currently in the game

Right now, to upgrade your training or youth facilities, you can request that the board upgrades them. This means that they receive a small upgrade, and often for a small-ish fee. However, there should be an option to build completely new facilities. This would increase the rating of the facility to increase significantly, but would take longer and cost more. Should be an option for clubs with strong financial position and/or below-average facilities

Yeah. Lampard's Chelsea signed many players because of his reputation too

I've found the solution. Singapore's youth intake month is in September, but I started the save in July. That meant I missed the date for the youth intake preview, which should've come in May/June. Simulating a bit more to September of the year after showed that the youth players are correctly loaded in their respective youth teams.

I added new leagues and cups to an existing country, Singapore. Right now, all the newgens are created properly, but are always created as free agents. All the clubs' u18 and u21 teams do not have newgens after simulating for a year. Any idea on how to fix this? I'm completely new to the pre-game editor

You are looking at it in a realistic sense, that FM is trying to predict the growth of a footballer based on factors available in real life. But this is not real life. My FM manager doesn't exist in real life, and as an extension, any player's development under my in-game manager should not attempt to EXACTLY follow real-life. My suggestion is for the ability to alter a player's career path by changing how they are developed. Perhaps you could have a 25 year old 120CA striker, who with a position change, correct man-management, good team cohesion/performance etc. become a 140CA central midfielder? It can happen IRL, so why can't it happen in-game? I understand it may not be very often, but infrequent shouldn't mean impossible. Look at Joelinton. You could make the argument that if Newcastle had not had a Saudi takeover and hired Eddie Howe, he would not be as good of a player as he is today. There were many factors in this sharp improvement. The Saudi takeover meant that he had better teammates to play around. Howe's appointment and coaching meant that he started playing a different position and role, which was much more suited to his abilities. Newcastle's league performance improved, which reduced the pressure of relegation on the entire squad. I'm also not suggesting for this feature to be overpowered to the point where you can have 20 Jamie Vardy's in your non-league to PL save. That would make any save be incredibly unrealistic and way, way too easy. PA increases should be limited to very specific situations, and many factors have to come into play for there to be a significant PA change. Such factors could include determination increases, personality changes (i.e. someone with a better personality is more likely to have this PA increase, etc.) This feature would mean that it'd incredibly unlikely for someone to replicate a Jamie Vardy, or even a Junior Messias or Edouard Mendy. But NOT impossible. I just think that this feature would make the game more fun, as you can look at at your save and think "I've managed to turn <known subpar player> into a rotational player through my coaching and tactical decisions".

Yes, everyone who determines the potential of footballers are human and makes mistakes. Be it FM researchers, or IRL scouts/analysts. Shouldn't there be a feature in-game to account for this margin of error then?

At the moment, contract negotiations are the only way for an offer to be sent to a player. It's not possible to send an offer to someone who has little to no interest in joining. For example, a player didn't want to join as they had no faith in my club's financial status to meet his contract demands. However, I was unable to even send him a contract offer as he did not want to negotiate at all. This would be made more realistic if I could craft a contract offer and send it to the player without negotiations. This has been done quite frequently IRL, especially with Saudi Arabian teams offering lucrative contracts to players who'd otherwise not want to join them.

At the moment, players determine the team they'd like to join based mainly on their reputation and perceived CA/PA, as well as the club's reputation. However, many transfers IRL happen due to a club having a promising project, often due to an excellent manager. For example, Roma have managed to sign many top players who attribute their choice to Jose Mourinho being the coach of the club. This feature could be implemented in the form of a "Convince player to join" button. where you'd speak directly to a player to convince them of the project.

It does not have to be overpowered, it can be implemented in a way that is incredibly hard to get a player's PA to increase significantly. It's just that not having this be possible at all is completely unrealistic. The current system can be kept, with this added feature that makes it possible, but very difficult to increase your player's PA. It can be based on several factors, such as morale, mentoring, training rating, match performance, playing in a certain role/position, team match performance etc. Didn't Brighton do this with Mitoma? And probably a few others like Enciso, Buonanotte, Ferguson etc. There are a few more examples, but the fact that this is possible in real life, should mean that it's possible in-game, even if it's incredibly difficult.

This would have to be the case for Vardy's situation to happen in FM, which is incredibly unrealistic. I'm proposing a feature that Vardy's PA would be around 110, and due to some circumstances (good performance in matches, good training rating, playing in a preferred role, good morale etc.), his PA climbs to 160 rapidly

Yes, I understand that this is the current implementation for there to be a range of PA's available. However, it does not work in the scenarios that I mentioned. There is zero possibility for player growth like Joelinton, Junior Messias, Edouard Mendy, Jamie Vardy etc. to occur in-game. Players who are in their mid to late 20s will never have that exceptional growth even if they play exceptionally well, which is quite infuriating. There's no point of this feature not being in a game that's predominantly single-player. It would improve the realism of player development and allow the game to be more immersive.